I have to admit that the name of Weingut Staffelter Hof wasn’t one I was familiar with, that is until I was invited to a tasting of its wines at Hanging Ditch. When I learned that it is one of the oldest vineyards in Germany, having celebrated its 1150th birthday just over two weeks ago, my ignorance was all the more embarrassing.
Read MoreAs an addendum to A Weekend To Remember, we were “allowed” to visit one winery the next afternoon, and Zýmē’s beautiful cave was only a couple of miles away from where we were staying. Carved into the hillside, their barrel cellar is a fifteenth century quarry hewn out of the sandstone, painstakingly recovered from nature and sympathetically fitted with dramatic uplighting, climate control and a beautifully appointed tasting room.
Read MoreIt took my dad literally seconds to decide where he would like to spend his 65th birthday weekend; it didn’t take him very much longer to rustle up a few Ryanair tickets and to book a hire car. Eventually the weekend rolled around and we hopped on a plane to Bergamo before following the autostrada right into the heart of the Valpolicella region.
Read MoreA recent weekend away was a rare chance to spend time with many of my closest friends, as well as an extended excuse for a few drinks. However, as lovely as it was, it wasn’t really the occasion for great wines. That being said, who can go a whole weekend with nothing decent to drink?
Read MoreDue to the usual nonsense that is work, my recent attempt to leave the office at twelve was thwarted until nearer two o’clock. Still an early finish you might say, but I was heading to the Specialist Importers Trade Tasting (SITT) where there were forty or fifty exhibitors all of whom were desperate for me to try their wares and all of whom were only there until four o’clock.
Read MoreThanks to Ben and Mark at the award winning Hanging Ditch Wine Merchants for organising a very enjoyable and interesting Bordeaux tasting dinner earlier this month at the St. James’s Club. Given their ethos of quality being paramount I knew that the wines on offer would not disappoint, but the objective of keeping the wines affordable was going to be more of a challenge.
Read MoreGiuseppe Quintarelli, the incomparably gifted and inspirational maestro of the Valpolicella region, has passed away aged eighty-four after suffering from Parkinson's disease for some years. Each of his wines, from his Valpolicella to his Amarone Riserva, has such effortlessly beautiful poise, concentration and sense of place that it is easy to overlook the dedication, the skill and the love that the quietly unassuming "Bepi" lavished upon them.
Read MoreIt doesn’t take much to make me want to open a good bottle of wine, but reminiscing about great bottles past is a sure fire way to make me grab a corkscrew and head down to the cellar. Mention of the bottle of 1992 Yalumba Octavius Shiraz that returned with me from Australia started me thinking that it was about time that I tried a bottle from the case of the 1996 vintage I bought ten or twelve years ago.
Read MoreI’ve wanted to try to make this for a while, and what better time to have a go at Oeufs á la Neige (“Snow Eggs”) than on Christmas Eve? This dish of poached quenelles of meringue coated with caramel and floating on crème Anglaise is a favourite of my brother, and anything involving custard always wins my vote.
Read MoreI know it’s hard to believe, but this job isn’t always as glamorous as my writings would have you think. It’s not all plain sailing, you know. Only my dedication to the public service that is this blog enables me to cope with the good, the bad, and the ugly faces of the wine world with such impunity.
Read MoreNow that I’m all too close to being forty years old, I think I’ve reached the right point in my life to start smoking. To hell with the consequences.
Read MoreCommon wisdom states that you should never return to a past love, and so it was with a degree of trepidation that I opened a bottle of wine which I had tasted (and loved) only once before, almost twelve years ago to the day.
Read MoreWhy don’t we drink more Alsatian Pinot Noir?
Read MoreAlthough today began pretty much like any other day, a fortuitous visit to Majestic on my way home from work for a couple of alarmingly premature Christmas presents jogged my memory about the significance of the date.
Any ideas? I’ll give you a clue. Today is the third Thursday in November.
I always try my best to support tastings up here in the north west, even if I have to pay for a ticket so to do! A recent, and rather high profile, event caught my eye and I thought that I should pop along to see what it was all about. This was the second in a series of three tastings hosted by the Three Wine Men: Oz Clarke, Tim Atkin MW and Olly Smith, all of whom are perfectly charming and frighteningly knowledgeable.
Read MoreI played hooky on Tuesday to attend Decanter’s Great Winemakers of Italy tasting in London. I suspect that the Istituto Del Vino Italiano Di Qualità Grandi Marchi is little more than a good excuse for many of the great and good of Italian wine to get together, pat themselves on their backs and come up with new ways of inflating their prices, but if it means more tastings of this calibre then I can’t complain too much.
Read More“We take you now to Kermit the frog with another fast breaking news story…”
Read MoreEvery year I think about buying a couple of cases of Bordeaux en primeur, but every year I always seem to have either just bought a case or two of something interesting or I find that I’ve just allocated my next few months’ wine allowance to several bottles of something I just can’t live without.
Read MoreAn interesting one ce soir, a 2010 old vine Grenache Blanc by Domaine du Clos des Fées (14.5% ABV). I’ve been a big fan of this estate’s reds for ten years or more, but for some reason I never got round to trying its sole white. It always seemed rather pricey, even when Oddbins (R.I.P.) was interesting enough to stock it, and, at €18 from the cellar door, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d feel the same today.
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